


hand over mouth, over and over

by Elvamire



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous Age, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Heterochromia, M/M, Mentioned Jeanmarco and Eruri if you squint, Non-Graphic Smut, Present Tense, Reincarnation, Unrequited Crush, artist!Eren, heterochromic!Eren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:53:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvamire/pseuds/Elvamire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outside the boundaries of Wall Rose, Eren dies on a bloody battlefield with his best friend's lips on his and a confession left unspoken in the air.</p><p>In a different place and a different time, Armin is strangely fascinated with the boy who lives in the next street over, even though they have never spoken. Until now.</p><p>Across countless lifetimes, all they are ever given is one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hand over mouth, over and over

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't put an Underage warning because while their age is intentionally ambiguous, I can still guarantee their of age where, in my head, this is set.
> 
> The title is a song by A Lot Like Birds because it makes me think of these pretty boys and it's what I was listening to when this idea smacked me in the head. And I suck at making titles on my own.
> 
> Eren has heterochromia in this fic because that's my jam.

The sun is setting, casting odd light across the sky and bathing the clouds in red. The harsh colour bleeds away at the edges of the horizon, pink and peaches somehow blending seamlessly into the indigo and violet of the encroaching night. Once, Armin thought sunsets were one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, but after the ruin of Shiganshina and the towering funeral pyres of Trost they just made him think of gore.

Eren is a constant heavy weight against his side as they ride through the grass. In any other situation Armin would have felt bad for how hard he was working the horse, but Eren’s grip on his shoulder is limp and weak, and keeps slipping where the blood makes his fingers slick. His head lolls against his, smearing scarlet in his blond hair.

                It had happened suddenly, without any warning. Titans had come out of nowhere in the middle of the latest expedition from beyond the walls, from all directions, and set about destroying their squad. They had fought, Levi barking instructions at them as he cut through titans, until the signal had come that the main formation was under attack too and he fled, Erwin’s name a horrified whisper on his lips.

Jean had kissed the hilt of his blade and taken up a shaky command, but it seemed useless. There were simply too many of them, and all Eren’s screams to try and control them fell on deaf ears. A titan had snatched him up and began to crush his fragile, human body between its giant fingers before Mikasa sailed by and sliced off the hand at the wrist. Blinded by steam, Armin saw her careen towards its gaping mouth, but nothing more than that. Whilst Armin struggled to pull Eren free of the dissolving hand, Jean had thumped to the ground beside him after physically tearing himself from between another titan’s teeth. He’d leaked more blood into the grass than Armin even thought humans contained. His last breath formed a murmur of Marco’s name.

That had been the final straw. Armin tore Eren free and hauled him onto one of the horses left alive and not yet frightened into running away, fleeing the bloodbath. He didn’t think Eren would have allowed it, but he was too weak to protest.

Now, they have been riding for hours, and Armin is tense, his fingers white-knuckled on the reins. Eren losing his grip and falling is a constant risk, but as long as he feels his hot and heavy weight against his back, he can breathe- as long as Eren is breathing still, shallowly against the nape of Armin’s neck. Eren’s breath stinks of blood, but it’s that warm reassurance that keeps Armin’s heart from pounding its way right out of his ribcage in terror.

Jean is dead.

Mikasa is almost certainly dead.

The others are probably dead too.

They are alone, in titan territory. The attack was disorienting, and Armin’s desperate escape had been directionless. He has no idea where they are, all turned around and lost outside the walls. He suspects they are too far from the walls to hope to be back before dusk, and definitely too lost, but Armin knows they can’t keep riding in the dark. There is a forest up ahead, and he has been steering them towards it. Eren’s manoeuvre gear is broken and he is in no state to be carried, but at least the forest will be hard for titans to enter. They will be as safe as they can be. Armin rides onwards, feeling Eren’s arm loop around his waist and his head nuzzle his back. He just hopes he can hang on a little longer.

When they reach them, the shadow of the trees feels like a blessing. Armin keeps the horse going until it can no longer fit through the gaps between the trees before he dismounts. Eren sways dizzily, and Armin reaches out to steady him, and tries to pull him down. He is heavy in his arms, limp like a rag doll, and it takes all of his effort to move him the small distance to slump against one of the thick tree trunks around them. He doesn’t bother to tether the horse- at this point, losing it wouldn’t be that much of a blow, and he’d rather focus on Eren.

The bloody boy is boneless against the tree, his eyelids half open and flickering. He is drenched in red, and Armin wishes that titan blood didn’t evaporate so fast, so he could at least pretend that not all of it is Eren’s. There is no rising steam from his skin; he is not healing, and Armin doesn’t know why.

Armin’s fingers work quickly. He pulls off Eren’s bloody jacket, and loosens the buckles on the top half of his harness until the leather straps fall away from him. The green cloak is long gone, but he pulls it off and drapes it around his shoulders. The air is cooling fast now that the sun has set, and the last thing he needs is for Eren to catch cold.

 _Not,_ an insidious little voice whispers in his head, _that he will survive anyway_.

                The pasty skin around Eren’s mouth is shining crimson. His lips are painted as if with makeup, and where they are parted all Armin can see is dark red. His hands are- there’s no other word for it, they’re ruined. Eren has torn out chunks of flesh with his teeth in his desperation to trigger a transformation, and Armin can see bone in places. Even what’s left has been torn to shreds. Despite that, he knows that not all that blood is from his hands. It keeps leaking out in dribbles and dregs from his mouth, dripping out of his nose. Something is very badly damaged inside his friend, probably from where the titan grabbed him. Every breath he takes wheezes.

Armin sits back on his haunches, breathing hard. He tilts his head to look over his shoulder at the sky visible beyond the trees. It is no longer the colour of a battlefield. The dark blue of night has bled into the red and turned it violet, which fades to pink along the horizon. Above him, Armin can see the first hints of stars, and he makes a premature, hopeless wish. His heart beats in his chest like hummingbird wings, nightmarishly fast- as if it is trying to drum out a whole lifetime’s beats before the sun disappears completely.

Somehow, Armin does not feel like his heart is racing against the clock for his own sake. He does not think he is going to die. He feels like what happens to him is going to be far worse.

He hates himself, a little. He left the survivors of their squad- of the whole Scouting Leigon- alone for the sake of spiriting away one boy. Worse yet, he didn’t even do it because this is Eren Jaegar, the last hope of humanity and their best weapon against the titans, but because he is just Eren, who Armin has loved since they were children and he picked him up off the ground when the older kids pushed him down.

Armin is kind, but he is not a moral person, and despite his guilt he would do the same again. If Mikasa is dead, Eren is all he has left.

“’M sorry.” A voice slurs, and Armin whirls around with wide eyes. Another rivulet of blood runs from the corner of Eren’s mouth to trail a thick line down his neck.

In that moment, he knows Eren is dying. He has known since he saw fingers curl around him and squeeze, but Eren has lost limbs and been swallowed whole and stabbed through the chest with debris. He has survived more than this, so how can he die this way, now, under the setting sun?

“For what?” Armin asks, forcing a smile even though he can feel hot tears on his skin, leaving clean tracks in the blood and dirt on his face. Eren’s eyes are open and they are shockingly, startlingly beautiful, but unfocused and hazy, and he hopes he is too delirious to notice he is crying. He draws and releases a shaky breath, and then reaches out to grasp Eren’s ruined hands in his own. He is cringing at the gore, but he feels like he has to do this. Make him as comfortable as possible, make him feel safe and cared for. Thankfully, Eren flinches away with a pained hiss, and Armin feels like he can withdraw his hands.

“For not being able to use my powers.” Eren finally replies. It sounds like every word is a monumental effort, and more blood keeps dripping from his mouth. Mixed with saliva, there is more of it than there should be, and it is violently red. “To transform… or help… or heal…”

“It’s fine.” Armin whispers. He hears his own voice is if from far away, and surely his heart is going to fracture his ribs with its pounding. He fears it will burst, or break, long before Eren draws his last rattling breath. “It’s not your fault. I think we’ve all been working you too hard.”

The implication, of course, is that Eren will be able to rest soon, and the thought keeps Armin’s tears flowing.

“I’m the one who’s sorry.” Armin says after a long moment. “I ran away. Like a coward.” His fingers curl against his thighs, nails digging in, and he grits his teeth.

Eren is silent. His eyes have fallen shut again, and he slumps against the tree trunk. Every rise and fall of his chest shakes and rattles, like someone has left metal inside of his lungs. But for that, he is still- except for what remains of his hands. They wander, searching, clenching and unclenching. Armin shifts forwards on his knees, and Eren catches the hem of his shirt with a pleased hum that sounds strangled in his throat. It must be agony to even move his fingers, let alone hold on to anything, so when he tugs, Armin moves forwards again. He is practically in Eren's lap by now.

“Hey, Armin.” He wheezes, and Armin’s watery blue eyes flicker up to meet Eren’s. He hates the film that seems to cover them. They have lost the sharp clarity he is used to seeing in them, the spark. Now, they are simply tired. They do not look like Eren’s eyes.

The exhaustion and the strain of moving and speaking is written into every inch of Eren’s body, but still he tries. “At least we got to go outside the walls, right?”

Armin laughs, then. It’s true, but for the first time in his life he wishes he’d never gotten outside at all. He’d have given anything to keep Eren.

They will never see the ocean.

                The hand that isn’t clutching Armin’s shirt lifts, reaching out for him. It’s shaking badly, blood congealing over the gruesome wounds. Nevertheless, Eren’s eyes are full of a familiar determination behind their haze. His hand touches Armin’s cheek in a light caress. The fingers trail down, smearing blood clumsily across his face, until he holds Armin’s chin in his hand, thumb toying with his lower lip.

Armin goes very still, except for his eyes, which widen. This is the last chance they will get, he supposes. He has never said anything about his feelings to Eren, and Eren has never said anything to him either. The love he feels for his best friend has always hung unspoken in the air. It must be obvious, he supposes- he never made a conscious effort to be subtle about it. And Eren… there have always been fleeting moments when he thinks Eren may feel the same, prompted by gestures as simple as eyes lingering on him a moment too long or as grand as dragging him from a titan’s mouth. He has always pushed these suspicions aside, determined not to get his hopes up.

Yet he is somehow not surprised when Eren uses his grip on his shirt to pull himself forwards and kiss him. He practically falls against the blond as his strength fails him, and their lips crash hard against each other. Armin feels Eren’s teeth knock his. Automatically, his hands come up to come through dark hair, and he feels them come away wet. He wants to grab, to push and pull and swallow Eren whole, but he doesn’t want to break him anymore than he already has been. The kiss is wet and sloppy and unpractised, but it is the most sincere and passionate he has ever had.

And it is the cruellest kiss, too. Eren is licking Armin’s mouth open and he tastes of salt and rusty iron, a steel blade gone dull and destroyed. His hands tremor violently where they hold Armin’s shirt and his face, and he can feel against his lips how laboured and messy his breathing is becoming. It is so, so unfair, that he should finally kiss Eren only when he is dying and delirious. All he can taste, all he can smell, is blood. It has become his whole world. He wonders if this is how Eren feels when he is drowning in it.

Armin pulls away, and the thin string of spit and blood that connected their lips snaps and splashes across the back of his hand. He meets Eren’s gaze head on, and to his dismay his eyes are still hazy and out of focus. He wonders if he would ever kiss him with sharp senses.

They both try to speak at the same time.

“Why-”

“Armin, I lo-”

Armin hisses out a startled gasp, and his hand shoots up to cover Eren’s mouth. His eyes widen a fraction, but there is no other reaction. Armin wishes there had been. He wants Eren to kick and scream and pin him down to shout the declaration in his face, just to show some sign that he is alive.

As always, Armin does not get what he wants.

“Don’t speak.” He murmurs gently. His hand stays over Eren’s mouth, and he can feel blood between his fingers. “Don’t waste the energy.”

It isn’t just that. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he only hears those words now, when Eren is slipping through his fingers like so much sand.

                Cautiously, Armin moves to sit next to Eren against the tree trunk, putting his arms around him while trying not to move him too much. He doesn’t want to put him in any more pain than he is already facing. Eren curls up like an animal against his side, bumping his head against his ribs.

“Hurts.” Eren whimpers.

Armin presses his mouth to the top of Eren’s head, the cogs in his brain usually reserved for battle strategies whirring. He doesn’t want Eren to be in pain while he dies.

“Look at the sky.” He says quietly, using his grip on the brunette boy to sit him up. It works, but he is still slumped against Armin’s smaller body, and he tucks his dark head underneath his chin.

Eren does as he is told, turning his head up towards the sky as Armin supports him. The sun has completely set since they found their way into the forest, and the sky is black and spangled with stars, white fire among the clouds. Armin can pick out some of the constellations, paths between the bright dots he found in a heretical book. The moon hangs as a silver sliver in the sky, pale and shining.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Armin says quietly. The night sky had made them both soft and still, and he worries he will break the spell if he speaks too loudly. Eren just makes a wordless noise of agreement. His breathing is slowing.

Armin closes his eyes, taking a moment to compose himself. Then he raises a hand towards the stars, trembling with the effort not to cry and scream and rage at the heavens about the unfairness of it all. He focuses on the stars, trying to remember where the constellations are, their names. He finds one, points at it.

“Remember when I told you about constellations? That’s Cygnus.” He says, tracing the shape in the air with his index finger. “A swan, in the stars.”

He watches Eren’s eyes take the same path his hand did, and he smiles faintly. His chapped lips crack, and the blood that beads up on them is lost underneath what is already there. Battered and bruised and covered in blood, his eyes shine brighter than any star, like candles burning stronger than ever before they are snuffed out.

“Show me another.” His voice sounds strained simply from speaking, but there is a hint of his familiar passion there. Armin chokes back a sob. He remembers this from the books he had read and the deathbeds he has stood by: rallying the last of their strength, the small improvement before they simply fade away.

Nevertheless, he holds Eren close to him and begins pointing out the drawings he finds within the stars. When he runs out of known ones that he can find, he begins to make them up. He gestures at the sky, creating new constellations with wild abandon, and Eren watches it all from beneath his hair, matted with blood. He keeps dozing, and Armin keeps nudging him awake in a panic. He cannot, will not allow Eren to sleep. His hand is in his and his head rests on his shoulder, close in an intimate way they never have been. Something has changed- Eren knows that Armin loves him and Armin knows the same of Eren, even if he won’t allow the words to be spoken aloud.

It is so cruel, that they only get one night.

                The sky is slowly lightening when, with an effort, Eren moves to sit up in Armin’s lap, eye to eye with him.

“Armin.” He breathes, and Armin moves almost instinctively. He cups Eren’s face in his hands, brushing his thumb over his cheek, and simply looking at him for a moment. There is blood behind his ear as well as on his face, a small red smudge, and even with all his injuries he doubts it belongs to Eren. He wonders which of their friends’ mangled bodies it came from as they were torn apart in midair. Jean? Mikasa?

When Armin kisses Eren again, it is tender, with slightly parted lips. He tries to tell him everything in that kiss that he never put into words, but all he gets in return is the copper tang of blood on his tongue and the ruins of a long-fingered hand puling him desperately closer. There is sunlight burning through his closed eyelids. Eren shudders once as Armin steals his final breaths, and then is quite still.

                Armin leans away, carefully resting Eren gently against the trunk of the tree where they had spent the night gazing at stars. His hands are shaking so violently now (he is cold, so cold, and so very tired) that he is surprised he manages to close his odd eyes, now blank and glossy. Slumped there, Eren resembles a broken doll. His tanned skin has gone pallid, and he is still soaked with his own blood. There is nothing about him that could be mistaken for someone sleeping peacefully. There is nothing beautiful or romantic about his broken form. It is not like in the stories.

Armin turns his face towards the rising sun, and screams.

 

***

_2013_

Armin sighs and sets his pen down on his desk, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. The pen has run out of ink halfway through a geography essay that already spans pages, and he has lost the will to write anymore. His eyes stray to the temptation that is his bookshelf, full of battered encyclopaedias and stories about places he’ll never visit until he is old enough to travel the world. There are other things there, too, shells and bits of driftwood salvaged from the beach as if he were desperate to take some part of it home with him, prove it was real.

Sighing softly, Armin sits up straight again, resting his head listlessly on his hand. As it so often does, his gaze flickers out of the window that his desk faces. His house is built so that the back of it faces the back of another house in the street behind his own, and his bedroom window is level with the window of another boy. It always has been, for as long as he can remember.

He has never spoken to the boy who lives there. He goes to the same school as him- his name is Eren, he’s heard the teachers call it out- but they’ve never spoken even once. It seems strange, considering how often Armin watches him. He knows it is strange, creepy even, but he can’t help himself most of the time. He can see all of Eren’s bedroom through the window, the bed and the wardrobe and the large easel that takes up one of the corners. He can watch him when he paints or sits listening to music, when he brings friends home for sleepovers, when he sits with his sister and talks with her late into the hours of the night. He has seen Eren stagger home from parties and collapse onto the bed, falling into a deep, exhausted sleep. He has seen him forget to close the curtains as he changes, and he has turned away and blushed when he slipped off his shirt and revealed his muscular back.

But they have never spoken. Armin could never bridge the tiny gap between their lives.

Eren fascinates him, in some ways. Perhaps it’s just an affect of having such a clear glimpse into another person’s home, being a spectator in their life. He feels oddly drawn to him, but even though he is close enough to touch Armin has never reached out. He’s too shy. Eren is an enigma, a boy who could be popular if he tried, who gets into fights at school but is beloved by his teachers anyway. He is passion and fire made incarnate, from what Armin has seen. His paintings line the walls of the art department at their school, and they are beautiful and wild.

Armin knows a schoolboy crush when he feels one. It just so happens that this particular one has lasted since he was four. He’s always been enchanted by Eren, even without talking to him. Sometimes, he dreams about him, although not always in the way that he knows him. He’ll dream about them riding horses on a battlefield, or watching each other secretly across a ballroom in Victorian dress. The dreams always unsettle him. When he wakes, he feels somehow unreal, like he has been displaced from the world and has to find his way back.

                Today, the windows of Eren’s room are bare, stripped of their curtains. The clutter and mess usually contained in it is gone, and his easel has disappeared from its corner. The wardrobe doors gape open, empty of their clothes. Walking to school last week, Armin saw the for sale sign in front of the house behind his own. News travels fast in their small town; he knows the Jaegars are moving away tomorrow.

Armin has never spoken to him, and now he never will.

                Armin sighs, pushing back his chair and getting up out of it. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to finish the rest of his homework tonight. There’s something restless in him, as there often is, and he needs a way to settle himself. He pads out of his bedroom, leaving the door ajar, and heads downstairs.

“Grandpa?” He calls, standing in the hallway. The front door is in front of him, waiting, but Armin never leaves home without saying goodbye. He never told his parents goodbye. He was too young to think they might not come back.

He waits until he hears a vague, affirmative sound from the living room where his grandfather is undoubtedly sitting in his armchair as always, and then continues.

“I’m going to go for a walk.” He does it often, almost every night. He likes walking in the dark and the night air and gazing up at the stars, daydreaming about things that he doesn’t think ever really happened.

“Have you finished your homework?” His grandfather’s voice asks after a moment.

“Almost. It’s not due in until after the holidays, anyway.” He says, already reaching for the keys to unlock the door. His grandfather never denies him going for his walks. He rarely denies him anything. He knows Armin is a good boy, and often a sad boy too.

He can’t help the second part. Most of his life has been tinged with a vague melancholy, a loneliness that he can’t shake no matter how many friends he has. He sits in his room and listens to love songs, and thinks about someone that he cannot remember. Its one of the things that has always marked him out for teasing among his classmates, his quiet nature and strange obsession with lives he has only ever lived in his dreams.

                After a few more moments, his grandfather gives him permission to leave, and Armin slips out the front door and locks it behind him. It’s getting dark, the sky painted a hundred different pastel colours as the sun begins sinking behind the horizon. If he knows himself out all, Armin thinks he will stay outside long after it has disappeared to make way for the moon.

The air is cool around him, a faint breeze stirring his blond hair. He shivered, crossing his arms over his chest to hug himself, glad he realised his jumper wouldn’t be enough and grabbed his coat before he left.

He heads off down the street where the lights are just starting to come on overhead, his ankle boots silent on the asphalt. He can hear the sounds of the night around him, leaves stirring in the wind, cars on the main road nearby and voices from teenagers in the park up ahead. The little town he calls home is sleepy but alive, and Armin moves through the streets like a ghost.

                When he rounds the corner to head down the street behind his own, he stops. He isn’t used to seeing other people out this late, but there is a figure standing out in front of one of the houses, staring up at the sunset sky. They are wearing a hoodie, but the skin on their hands looks somehow red under the orange light of the street lamp.

It’s Eren, Armin realises quite suddenly. He sees static, the stillest that he has ever seen the boy he is used to shouting and fighting and running through the corridors. For a moment, he simply stands there, his breath frozen in his throat as he stared at the back of Eren’s head, but then he turns to look at him and the spell is broken.

Eren has the most striking eyes he has ever seen, sharp and shining like a wild animal- and more than that, they are mismatched in their colour, one a bright blue-green (teal? Is that the colour?) like he imagines the sea would be, and the other an expressive smoky grey. His face is smeared with scarlet, and flashes of images dart through Armin’s mind: wolves in the woods, muzzles blood and eyes hungering, sharp teeth gleaming in the dark. That’s what Eren makes him think of, something feral that humanity has long forgotten to fear.

Those eyes soften after a moment, and the muscles Armin didn’t realise the dark-haired boy was tensing relax. Now, it sees silly that Eren ever made him think of wolves and monsters. He’s just a boy.

“S-sorry.” Armin finds himself saying, stepping forwards into the artificial light of the lamp. It washes out his pale skin and casts strange shadows across his face, turning his hair the colour of red gold. “I didn’t expect anyone else to be outside…”

“It’s fine. I’m usually not.” Eren just looks at him then, absently scratching his septum. It’s not just his face that’s crimson- he’s covered from head to toe in red paint. It clings to his hands and has been splashed across his clothes in large stains. One of his eyes is bloodshot, and surrounded by a dark purple circled of bruising, which pales to lilac around the edges (Armin can see the red lines of capillaries beneath the skin, reaching out like tiny fingers). He looks like something out of a horror film, the final stupid teenager left alive to face the villain, daubed in the blood of his fallen friends.

It gives Armin the creeps, and shivers he can’t explain. A lot of things unnerve him more deeply than they should, and he’s never been able to explain them.

“What-” He cannot complete the question, so he simply gestures at Eren, who laughs. He has a good laugh, sincere and somehow familiar in a way that warms Armin’s heart.

“I was in the art room over lunch and Kirschtein was being annoying, so I threw paint on him. He socked me in the fact, and I guess I got covered in It too when I tackled him.” Eren explains. The first time he has ever spoken to Armin, he’s explaining a fight he got into. Somehow, he feels like it is oddly appropriate.

“So that’s what happens to Jean.” Armin recalls his sort-of-friend’s early departure from school that day. He looks down at his feet with a shy smile as he says it. Eren has such beautiful, intense eyes it makes him blush to look at them. “Fighting isn’t the best way to end your last day of school, is it?” It’s the first time he has ever spoken to Eren, he knows it is, so he doesn’t know why he thinks he can just lecture him; but the words flow easy from his throat and he doesn’t question them. He is just deeply, inexplicably grateful to finally be talking to him.

When he looks up again, Eren’s upper lip has curled in mild disgust.

“You’re friends with Kirschtein?”

“Uh- I have a lot of classes with Marco, so we study together. He and Jean just kind of come as a package.” Armin explains.

“Right- hey, maybe you can help me solve the mystery of why they’re dating. Marco’s such a nice guy, I don’t know what he sees in that spoilt brat.”

Armin feels a flicker of jealousy, irrational as it is, when he hears Eren talk about Marco in such a glowing voice.

“He’s nice to Marco.” Armin shrugs simply, stepping off to one side. “Ah…” He could, and would, stay and talk to Eren for hours, learn all he could about the boy he’d so far only been able to watch and dream about, but he doesn’t want to come off as creepy. He said he was going for a walk, and that was what he would do. He doesn’t want to bother Eren.

“Where are you going?” Eren asks, his head turning to follow Armin’s movements.

“On a walk.” Armin replies, sounding vaguely unsure. He’s not used to being asked about himself, especially by people like Eren. “I do it a lot.”

“Can I come with you?” Eren asks, his eyes bright and hopeful. Even if whatever made Armin think of wolves is gone, he still has wild eyes, full of passion and fire.

“Shouldn’t you be going home?” Armin frowns. He doesn’t want to bring up Eren moving away in the morning and how he should be well-rested for it, in case it seems creepy.

Eren looks over his shoulder at the house behind him, the lights shining through the curtains, and makes a face.

“I had a fight with my family- I don’t want to move. It took all I could not to get my sister to follow me out, though… I’m not going back tonight.” He explains, his voice quiet and dark.

Armin nods slowly, and chooses not to pry.

“Come on, then.” He says softly, jerking his head in the direction he’d been heading before the sight of Eren stopped him. He keeps his eyes trained shyly on the ground, able to see Eren’s feet as he follows along beside him. Silence falls between them, no noise but the quiet sounds of their shoes on the ground- nor not so quiet. Eren wears combat boots, and his strides are confident and loud.

“Why don’t you want to move?” Armin asks finally, glancing at Eren’s face at last. He doubts he would be pleased if his grandfather decided to uproot them either, but there is a line between being displeased and storming out of the house in a rage.

It’s a while before Eren replies.

“I feel like I belong here.” He says. “Like in the grand scheme of things, this is where I was meant to end up. I guess it’s almost like there’s something keeping me here. Something I can’t bear to keep away from. That’s what it feels like.”

Armin was very quiet, then. He thinks he knows how Eren feels. Before his parents’ death, they took him on a week long holiday to Amsterdam, and he felt the entirety of the trip he’d been looking forward to so much in constant distress. There had been a homesickness in him so deep he felt it physically, an uncomfortable tug in his stomach that told him he had forgotten something important, had left it behind. Sometimes he woke from dreams with the same feeling, or simply a wild wanderlust, with no explanation.

“I think I understand what you mean.” Is all Armin says. Fate is a funny thing and he doesn’t think he believes in it, but he is familiar with the conviction something is keeping them tied with places they belong, like a snarl of red string.

                They walk in silence. Armin hadn’t intended to lead the way, but he finds himself doing it regardless, his feet guiding them to the park. It is empty of the teenagers he thought he had heard earlier, and he wonders if he just imagined their voices.

They are still quiet as they move across the grass, Armin picking a delicate path around littered fragments of glass from vodka bottles while Eren in his heavy boots walks right through them. The shards glitter among the green like diamonds and premature dewdrops.

There is an oak tree with a thick trunk at one end of the park, its branches spread in a wide canopy, and it is beneath that tent of leaves that Armin folds his legs under himself and sits neatly on the ground. The grass is cold and damp, but he can smell earth and life and when he looks he can see the whole park fro here, the shining metal slides and the empty swings whose chains creak eerily in the wind. Above him is the sky, inky black now that the sun has finished setting, and it is so vast and open he feels almost like he is gazing down into an abyss. His fingers curl in the grass, as if he is afraid that if he doesn’t hold on to something he will slip and fall in among the infinite stars.

Eren sits down beside him, all messy limbs taking up more space than he needs while Armin curls ever farther in on himself.

“I thought you said we were walking?” Eren says, sparing a glance at the moonless sky. He looks uneasy.

“I was- to here. I like to look at the stars.” He can feel Eren’s eyes on him, so he finds himself continuing. “They make me sad, but in a good way. A weird way. Like I’m missing someone I can’t remember.”

He still isn’t looking at Eren, but he can hear fabric shift as he moves. His chest, hard with muscle, presses gently against Armin’s back, and he guesses that Eren’s head is just over his shoulder.

“I know what you mean.” He has the voice of someone telling a secret. “Stars make me feel the same way. It sucks, doesn’t it? You have all this sadness for someone, and you don’t even know who they are- and then you feel like you’ve betrayed them by forgetting. It’s like falling in love with someone from a dream.”

“They’re never there when you wake up.” Armin breathes. He has fallen in love in his sleep countless times, and he always wakes sick and lonely and thinking of mismatched eyes.

                Armin can feel Eren’s breath on the back of his neck, tickling the blond hairs there. He could, he realises, turn his head and kiss him. It would be so easy, and he knows Eren likes boys because when they were thirteen he saw him holding hands with Jean Kirschtein at the bus stop and then two weeks later their famous rivalry began and now it’s Marco who links pinkie fingers with Jean as they wander the school. He knows so much about this boy he has never spoken to before.

He never said anything about what he’d seen. It wasn’t his place.

But he could still kiss him. It would be so easy to turn his head and steal Eren’s lips, and he wants to. He barely knows him, but he feels a flutter in his chest and a lump in his throat when they’re this close.

“Do you know any constellations?” Armin blurts, shattering the spell of their intimacy. He had needed to do something to distract himself, or he would kiss Eren. He feels almost like it’s more of a need than a desire.

The dark haired boy looks bemused, but he slowly shakes his head. Armin can’t help but smile- it makes Eren’s face look softer and younger, the lines that furrow his brow disappearing. “Would you like me to show you some?”

Eren nods, so Armin turns back to look at the sky. He feels breathless somehow, almost giddy from the interest Eren is showing him.

“Okay.” He exhales the word, extending one pale arm to point at the sky and trace along two intersecting lines of stars with his index finger. “Do you see that? It’s Cygnus. It’s supposed to be a swan.”

                They sit together like that in the grass, with Armin pointing out constellations and telling their stories. As he speaks, they move; Armin ends up sitting sideways in Eren’s lap, their legs a tangle of limbs and Eren’s arm wrapped comfortingly around his waist. It’s bizarrely intimate when the two of them have only just met properly, but it feels right. He fits in his arms like he belongs.

His heart is beating so fast in his chest with something like anticipation that it feels more like a vibration. He could have kept talking about the cosmos for forever if it kept his lips busy, but before he knows it Eren’s fingers are slipping under his chin, turning his head to face him.

“Armin,” He breathes, and the sound of his name on his lips like that shatters and heals his heart all at once. What happens next is simply instinct, and he doesn’t believe he could ever have had control over it. His eyes fall halfway closed as Eren leans in and brushes his lips over his. They are chapped and raw from perpetual biting, but warm, and his touch is surprisingly gentle. He pulls back, brushes some of the blond hair from Armin’s face, and his eyes are soft.

He doesn’t ask if that was okay. He doesn’t have to; Armin twists in his lap and grabs his jacket, tugging him forwards to kiss him again. This time is not feather-light or delicate. Their lips crash together, teeth clashing, and Eren’s arms tighten around him. Armin’s eyes are open to stare into Eren’s, and when he sees they are sharp, focused, his heart soars.

They kiss hungrily, like greedy animals. Eren’s hands slide under Armin’s jumper and the blond gives as good as he gets, pulling his hair and biting his lip until it bleeds. The copper tang in his mouth is eerily familiar as Eren’s tongue slides under his.

Armin has never kissed like this before (he has never kissed like anything before) but somehow he knows what to do, how to make Eren gasp. It’s primal and it’s a half-forgotten memory, something deep in his veins and everything that makes him alive.

                They part with a gasp, a string of spit and blood momentarily connecting their lips and then snapping. Armin is breathing hard, raking his fingers through Eren’s hair. There is a smear of bright red paint behind his ear, and he wonders how it got there.

An eternity passes between them as they sit there, eye to eye.

“I’m sorry.” Armin says finally. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“I liked it anyway.” Eren is smiling at him, roughish, and it sends his heart fluttering again. “I like _you_. I can’t believe I’ve never talked to you before. It feels like I’ve been wasting time.”

Armin knows, intimately, what he means. And to take it a step further, he feels like they are still wasting time. Every second he spends not touching this beautiful boy is a moment wasted. He wants Eren, all of him, everywhere, around him and inside him, a heat that stirs in his stomach. It’s unfamiliar- he rarely feels this way about people- but it’s almost like he can remember desiring him this way before, and not just when he watched him from the window.

“Do you want to come back to mine?” He asks. He can feel the flush of blood on his face, but he can’t think of a pretence good enough to cover up what he wants: Eren. He isn’t used to feeling like this, having this primal kind of desire. It’s like an animal inside him, screaming to pull the dark-haired boy down, tear off his clothes and roll around with him in the wet grass. He _wants_ Eren, like he’s never wanted anything before. The kiss has lit a fire under his ribs and he is desperate.

“Yeah.” Eren breathes in response. Again, there is no cover up- no offer of a drink or food or comment about how cold it is out here and they should go inside. He’s inviting him back to his house to sleep with him, and both of them know it.

He never expected he would want to do this in the same night of his first kiss, with someone he barely knows, but he accepts it. It’s different with Eren. He feels like he’s known him a lot longer than their few hours, and he feels no shame about how much he wants to touch him.

                They rise from the ground together, hand in hand, and Armin takes moment just to stare into Eren’s eyes. He could look at them forever, just revelling in how bright and alive they are. He feels almost grateful for it, and he doesn’t understand why.

Still hand in hand, they walk away from the park, stealing glances at one another under the moonlight. By the time they are nearing Armin’s house again, they are running, laughing and bumping shoulders and tripping over their feet whenever Eren tries to steal a kiss and Armin dodges. It feels like old friends, like reawakening; his heart is beating harder in his chest than he could remember and it feels like finally coming alive. He has no idea what it is about Eren that makes him feel like this, but he chooses not to question it.

                The lights in Armin’s house are off when they turn on to his street, heading for the front door.

“You live right behind me.” Eren realises as Armin drags him up the garden path. His skin feels electric where Eren’s fingers are laced with his, his veins turning into live wires that fuel the furious pound of his heart.

“I do. Have you never noticed before?” Armin’s voice is teasing, to try and cover up the sudden hurt. He doesn’t know why he’s even surprised, let alone upset, that Eren didn’t know, but he is. After all, this is the first time they’ve spoken.

Eren’s hand is resting on his elbow, and he can feel his leg bouncing impatiently behind him, but he still stops to speak, a quiet admission that makes him nervous.

“I knew you lived behind me.” He says. “I… watch you, sometimes. At school, too. I’ve always thought that you were beautiful.”

He expects Eren to be creeped out, but that isn’t what happens. Instead, his tan hands reach up to cup Armin’s face and kiss him so deep and gentle he feels like he could melt. It’s the kind of kiss shared between lifelong lovers, not teenage boys barely more than strangers, but it still happened. Armin’s knees are weak.

                He pushes the door open and they stumble inside together, hands coming up to grip at each other. Eren closes the door by shoving Armin against it and kissing him breathless. He licks his mouth open and his hands find their way under his shirt, warm against the chilled skin of his stomach so that Armin lets out a shuddering gasp.

“My grandfather’s upstairs.” He warns as Eren’s lips move to kiss under his jaw, bite his neck. At least, he assumes he is, and that’s why the lights have gone out. It’s dark in the hallway around the. “I don’t know if he’s asleep yet, so we have to be quiet.”

“I can do quiet.” Eren promises as Armin reaches forwards to slide his hoodie off his shoulders. It falls to the ground, leaving him just in his paint-stained t-shirt, and Armin runs his hands almost reverently down his chest. The body under his hands is hard and corded with muscle, his stomach rising and falling as he breathes. His eyes are burning with the intensity that Armin recognises from watching him paint (and from somewhere else, somewhere strange he cannot quite remember) and it’s all focused on him. Heat flares up in his stomach, and he seizes his hair and drags him into a bruisingly hard kiss. Eren instantly crushes him against the door again, kissing back with the same ferocity. He pulls back after a moment to grip the hem of Armin’s jumper and yank it unceremoniously over his head, tossing it somewhere over his shoulder where it is instantly forgotten. He dives back in, his mouth fixing itself to the crook of his pale neck and biting down as a leg slides in between both of his.

Gasping, Armin shoves Eren back and grabs his hand in the same motion, pulling him towards the stairs. He lets go as he hurries up, but he feels Eren’s hands find his hips and rest there.

                He has only just pulled his bedroom door shut behind them when Eren’s hands are on him properly again, grabbing his face and kissing him hard. His movements are unplanned and frantic, desperate just to touch him. He lets go to pull his own shirt over his head in one fluid motion and toss it away, and Armin is left slack-jawed for a moment as he stares at the way his tanned body bends. There is a chain around his neck, his house key dangling from it, and muscles coil tight under his skin. It seems empty, somehow- like there is something which should be there that isn’t. _Scars_ , Armin realises. _He’s missing scars. Why do I think Eren has scars?_

His breath is still in his throat as Armin steps forward and places his hands on Eren’s chest. He runs his fingers over the smooth skin, watching rapt when pinching a dusky nipple makes his head fall back. He rises up on his toes, pressing a kiss to his lips that is soft and chaste compared to the others. Eren’s hands find him, too, resting on his shoulders for a moment before moving to the collar of his shirt.

He rips it open, buttons skittering to the floor where they were torn from the crisp white fabric, and Armin’s eyes fly wide in shock as the ruined shirt is shoved from his shoulders. For a moment, Armin is still, listening to nothing but the racing beat of his own heart as he stares into Eren’s eyes. In his periphery, he can see his chest rising and falling as he pants in time with him.

                Then Armin surges forwards, grabbing at Eren’s skin and knowing he’s scratching up his shoulders as he pulls him bodily towards the bed. The back of his own calves hit the mattress and he falls, pulling Eren with him until he is on top of Armin. His body is so hot and heavy it might have been stifling if he didn’t crave it so much. The feeling of his skin on his makes him gasp into his mouth as its captures in another kiss, and his hands are everywhere. His nails score pink lines down his back, pale fingers tangle in dark hair, his legs wrap around his waist and his hips rock upwards. Eren moans into his mouth and Armin _whimpers_ , the knowledge that he could draw that sound from him making him weak with arousal.

Eren’s hands come to rest on the mattress either side of Armin’s head and he pushed himself up, looking down at him. He doesn’t know how someone’s eyes can be so bright and hazy at the same time, but they’re clouded with lust and bright with desire, and oh God, Armin _wants_ him.

“Do you want this?” Eren asks, and his voice is surprisingly quiet. The question throws Armin off, but he’s glad it was asked.

“Yes.” His arms slide around Eren’s neck, pulling him down to kiss and bite at his throat. He hopes that he leaves marks on the skin, dark purple reminders that for one night, he was his and his alone. “But I don’t have a condom-”

“’S fine.” Eren slurs, and Armin finds himself hoping that the breathlessness in his voice is because of the teeth as his neck and the hips rocking against his. More than anything, he wants to be able to make him come undone. “Got one in my wallet.” He explains, and Armin wonders if going home with random boys is something that Eren does often. He decides it doesn’t matter, in the end, because whatever the answer is it doesn’t change that Eren is here with him now. Rapt, he watches the way that he moves as he sits up over him to reach into his back pocket, marvelling over the muscles that ripple in his arms, all sinew and sleek. His eyes follow his fingers as he grabs a condom from his wallet at then tosses the leather carelessly to the floor, turning back to Armin.

“Do you have any-”

“Yeah, just-” They are speaking in fragments as Armin places a hand against Eren’s chest and pushes him back so that he can sit up, but somehow they seem to be doing okay. It’s as if they don’t need whole sentences, just scattered words and touches are enough to tell each other anything. Again, Armin gets the sense that this is something people who have been together their whole lives do, and it baffles him. Eren baffles him; but he would prefer to shove that feeling aside in favour of arousal, of the twisting, uncomfortable heat in his lower stomach.

                He pulls open the drawer in his nightstand and roots around until he finds the tube of lube he blushed over buying and fretted over being found, tossing it to Eren and not having the presence of mind to be impressed when he catches it. His hands drop to his belt and tug it open with hasty movements, dropping his jeans and underwear to the floor as one before he clambers back into Eren’s lap.

He is breathless, reaching out to steady himself with his hands on tan shoulders. Then he looks down, and meets Eren’s gaze, and all the tension that had built up in his muscles without him realising disappears. Those eyes, for all their intensity, are steady and gentle and reassuring, and he presses forwards until their chests are touching skin-to-skin while Eren reaches behind him with a slicked hand.

It’s strange and it definitely feels like an intrusion, but he balls his fist in his dark hair and breathes out against his neck. Eren’s other arm is wrapped around him, and Armin can’t help the way it makes him feel. _Safe_. He trusts Eren implicitly. Another finger slides inside of him easily.

When he is ready, he reaches behind himself and squeezes Eren’s wrist to get him to stop. Then he reaches for his belt and undoes it, pulling him out with fingers he is surprised to see aren’t shaking. This is the first time he has ever done this, the first time he has ever even been naked in front of everyone, but that’s fine. It feels oddly familiar somehow, like he has been rehearsing this moment in his head over and over. Like he has done this with Eren before.

                The last of the lube is used to slick Eren up, and then Armin lowers himself on to him. His arms are still steady around his smaller body, and his cry is muffled where his head is buried in the crook of his neck. Minutes pass, an eternity maybe, and he slowly begins to rock his hips. He is aware that he is making soft, embarrassing noises under his breath, but he still revels in the way that Eren gasps and swears whenever he moves down. He feels powerful. He feels alive.

Eren promised that he could be quiet, but Armin should have known better than the believe him. No one who runs and jumps and shouts in the school corridors like he does could be quiet here. Drunk on the things he is feeling, Armin whispers a command to be quiet, and clamps a hand loosely over his mouth to muffle the noises he makes.

                It is so good, Eren inside him, his hand wrapped around him. His chest slides, slick with sweat, against Eren’s when he moves, and their breath mingles as they pant into open-mouthed kisses. It is as close as he has ever been to anyone, and his gratitude that it happens with Eren is infinite. He does not close his eyes (except when the pleasure crescendos for a moment, and he cannot help it) choosing instead to gaze into Eren’s and marvel at how beautiful he finds them. Unbidden, words rise in his throat and attempt to slip past his lips: _I love you_.

He doesn’t know why he wants to say it. He barely knows Eren, after all. It is stupid even to think about. So he bites the other boy’s lip and slams himself down and rides him hard enough that he thinks he will regret it in the morning.

But as time goes on Armin barely even feels it. His mind is being carried away from here. Away from his bed and the boy below him, he is somewhere else entirely.

               

_In another time and another place, the grass is slick and scarlet like the paint that covers Eren now, and Armin screams up at a cruel and godless sky._

_Somewhere else, he is walking along the street at night, nervous and worried. He hates having to pass the club as he walks home in the dark, hates the crowds that gather outside to shout and fight._

_Tonight, he can hear the shouting from far away already. There is a throng of boys his age outside the club, fresh from the concert’s pit and pushing and shoving at each other as they yell. It’s three against two, but the two are tall and broad, and Armin feels a flicker of fear even from across the street._

_Something glitters in the tallest boy’s hand, and there is a scream. One of the trio crumbles against his companion, the one with the two-toned hair. The tall boys flee, but no one moves to stop them- all eyes are on the boy on the ground._

_Armin’s feet carry him across the road before he knows what he is doing, and he drags the wounded boy into his lap, assuring the others that he can help. He lies easily, and concentrating on what is happening leaves no room for him to wonder why he thought it was so important to get to this stranger._

_He looks down to see a deep red stain spreading across a shirt, staining a cheap leather jacket. Eyes that shine two different colours find his, his fingers gripping Armin’s wrist hard enough to bruise while he shakes and shudders._

_Someone is calling an ambulance, but there is no time. The boy’s friends are crying, shouting, trying to get people to search for their attackers. In the middle of the street, Armin shakes and rocks and the stranger dies in his arms._

_Another life has been spent mostly confined to a dark and stinking building, full of soiled bed sheets and sweating men._

_“I never expected a lordling to be here.” He says, watching the young man out of the corner of his eyes. He had never expected a client to pull his hands away from his belt and insist he just wanted to talk, either, but he feels like it would be rude to say that._

_“I’m not sure I want to be.” Lord Jaegar’s son keeps his face turned away, and Armin wonders if he is insecure about his eyes. He would be- if he were lower born, he might have had something to fear from it. Armin resolves not to mention it, and looks hopelessly around his room for a conversation which will fill up the time he was meant to spend being fucked. His gaze settles on the open window._

_“My Lord, do you know any constellations?”_

_The air in another place is thick and hot with the smell of blood, but Armin continues forwards. He is a doctor, and though he never wanted to be sent to a battlefield, this is what he chose to do with his life. He walks between the beds, trying not to listen to the groans of dying men, helping where he can._

_Without warning, a wrist closes around his. His eyes widen, and then flicker down to the man in the bed. He is defiantly silent, even though the burns that cover most of his body must be agony. His dark hair has been all but singed off. Armin knows he will not last to see the sunrise- he’d known that the moment they dragged him into the field hospital from the burning wreckage of the plane._

_Beneath the disfigurements, there is something intimately familiar about that face. Before he quite knows what is happening, he is crying, his voice high and shrill as he repeats apologies, again and again._

_“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-”_

_A different world, and Armin has lost count of how many times his fingers have slipped up on the keys that night. His face is hot and flushed from the eyes that have been boring into him since the bar opened up. He doesn’t know if the attractive man in the corner is a new rent boy, if he is a tourist who found his way to the bar, but he strongly suspects he will be asking Armin to go home with him._

_Armin strongly suspects he will allow it. He is already intrigued, by his eyes, and by something else that he cannot identify or explain._

_Besides, he’s only in Berlin for the boys. He couldn’t care less about cabaret._

_The room that a younger, newer Armin is pushed into is dimly lit, but he finds his way to the spare bed and sits heavily down on the end of it. He doesn’t want to be here, even if it is only for one night. He wants to go home._

_Someone stirs in the other bed, and a boy his age sits up and sleepily rubs his eyes. They are two different colours, and Armin tilts his head curiously._

_“Armin?” The boy says, quietly, but his voice is assured. His mother must have told him about their new, temporary foster child. In the gloom, Armin just nods._

_“My mommy told me your grandpa’s sick.”_

_He nods again. He can feel the lump in his throat just with those words, and he doesn’t trust himself to speak._

_“Are you scared?”_

_Another nod._

_The boy smiles, far too charming for his age, and squirms along to make a space in his bed. “You can come sleep with me, if you want.”_

_Above most things, Armin is shy, and scared of people bigger than he is. But he is also eight years old and frightened, and he dashes across the space between the beds to climb in with the other boy._

_For a night, they are each other’s best friends in the whole world._

_In another lifetime, Armin never even meets Eren. But he is lost in the woods, in the dead of winter, and the light from his lantern is spluttering out. When it dies, he finally notices the glowing eyes that have been watching him from the trees the whole time. They are strange, one of them teal blue and the other smoky grey._

_The wolf creeps closer to him, and Armin backs up instinctively. Before he can try to flee, his feet skid over and ice patch and he lands hard on the ground. Teeth chattering, he is helpless as the wolf with dark fur approaches him._

_To his endless shock, he is not harmed. Instead, the animal buts his chest with its head and curls up around him protectively. Acting on some higher impulse that goes beyond instinct and far beyond reason, he fists a hand in its thick fur._

_In the morning, a boy who failed to come home the night before lies white and still in the snow, and a lone wolf whines and licks hopelessly at his face, trying to rouse what cannot be awoken._

Countless worlds and lives spin through Armin’s mind with every rise and fall of his hips, and he is gasping, eyes wide and staring, amazed by what he sees. It makes no sense, and he refuses to accept it, but it is there.

He can feel his climax building, mounting, hot and undeniable inside him; and when he comes, he allows himself, for a moment, to believe in something strange. That he has met Eren before, in countless different times and places. That he has loved him and lost him more times than he can remember in anything more than short bursts and flashes. That in all of those lives, they have never said their feelings out loud, and they have never been given anything more than one night together.

Armin’s hips fall still when Eren shouts his orgasm, his hand slipping from his mouth to pull him into a hug that is quickly returned. He can feel him shaking against him, and Armin only hopes that he won’t notice he is hiding his face so that he can cry.

He wants to think that he doesn’t know why he’s crying, but in his heart he knows only too well.

 

***

 

He never asks if Eren wants to stay the night, but they fall asleep in Armin’s bed with their limbs tangled together. They are awoken in the morning, by Eren’s sister knocking at the door, and then there is only the rush to clean up and get dressed before Armin’s grandfather realises what happened while he slept.

As things go, they manage to convince everyone that it was an innocent sleepover, and Armin escorts Eren downstairs so that he can go home to his family. The removal van is already outside their house, and they will be leaving in a matter of hours.

They do not speak; there is nothing to be said. Armin wonders if Eren was crying too, the night before. He wonders if he felt and saw the same things that he did, and then decides he would rather not know the answer.

He stands on his porch and waves as Eren walks down the street to go home, like they are maybe strangers and maybe friends, but certainly nothing more than that. He watches Eren until he rounds the corner and disappears out of sight, straining for just one more glimpse of those odd, beautiful eyes. He doesn’t get it, because Eren doesn’t back.

Armin never sees him again.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been proofread and edited very briefly and sloppily but it's 3:00AM and I've been working on it for over a month so I really just want it done with.
> 
> The original last sentence would have had an 'in this lifetime' on the end but it didn't sound nearly as good so
> 
> I have a tumblr: http://elvamire.tumblr.com/


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